Whomever, from among these faculties, God desires to guide, to submission to the intellect, He expands his breast, that is, He facilitates [things] for him and makes his countenance, the one that is adjacent to the heart, projecting and capacious for the acceptance of His light and empowered for Its reception; and whomever He desires to send astray, He makes his breast, He makes [things] difficult for him and incapacitates him therefrom, narrow, darkened and deficient in its preparedness to receive the light [from Him], as though he were engaged in something impossible in seeking illumination from the light of the heart and requesting effusion therefrom. On the basis of this interpretation that we have mentioned and according to the exoteric meaning signified by the preceding verse: the one whom God desires to guide to affirmation of [His] Oneness, He expands his breast by the reception of the light of the Truth and the submission of existence to God through the removal of the veils of the attributes of his soul from the countenance of the heart that is adjacent to the soul, enlarging it thereby for the reception of the light of the Truth. As for the one whom He wishes to send astray, He makes his breast narrow and constricted by causing it [the soul] to dominate it and oppress it, as if he were engaged in ascent, to the heaven of his spirit with those corporeal configurations, which is an impossibility. So, God casts, the ignominy of being polluted by the pollutants of material attachments, or the ignominy of being chastised with corporeal configurations, over those who do not believe.
